Chapter 38
Alpha dogs
The day is moving towards midday, and though I’m struggling a little, it’s not as bad as we all feared.
My wounds are half-healed, and the clothes that Legion supplied fit me like a glove.
I’ve got a cape with armholes and a hood now to hide my hair.
My new boots are knee-high and soft enough to give me full flexibility.
The guys are also wearing softer, darker gear and are covered with the same hoods.
Legion had scoffed when Mordecai protested.
“You four are the most wanted alphas in this whole city. Don’t be dumb.”
And he had a point.
I glance around the building we’re in, watching for any movement, while I wait for the alphas to check out the floor above.
Jarek appears, his eyes hard, and holds his hand down.
I grab it, and he easily pulls me up onto the floor above.
There’s just a fragment of concrete left, but it’s enough to get where we need to go.
I’m glad I don’t have a fear of heights because this building is little more than a frame now, and the wind that buffets through it is strong enough to snatch a person off and into a free fall to their death.
Cadel and Mordecai wait, looking me over before Mordecai moves swiftly to the side of the building, dancing easily along rio rods, crumbling concrete, and steel beams. Jarek points ahead to a dark hole that is covered with vines and creepers.
“That’s where we’re going,” he whispers in my ear.
Mordecai glances down then back at me, as if making sure I’m still here, then holds his arms out and runs with perfect balance across a steel beam.
The beam smashed straight into the building adjacent to this one and into that vine-covered darkness. Cadel silently urges me up onto it. I glance down at the street and see members of the Path running around.
They have been in a frenzy. We hit the hornet’s nest and stirred them all up. I want to be sorry, but I can’t.
I don’t look down again, just run into the vine-covered hole and through into the darkness beyond.
I flip back my hood, looking at the dark and musty interior.
The wood on the tables is warped, but it’s still there.
There’s cords still plugged into electricity outlets.
Other than the age and decay, you’d have thought someone just stepped out; there’s no sign of anything terrible happening in here.
Jarek lets out a chuckle. “Home sweet home.”
Cadel ignores him, going around and checking every corner of the floor, making sure there’s nothing that will attack us. Mordecai pulls out a couple of wrapped bars. I take one without looking at him.
My outburst is still weighing with excruciating heaviness on me. I feel like it said more about me than him. Unhinged is a word that comes to mind. Damaged. I didn’t realise that I was so scared of being left behind. Abandoned.
He’s still got a bruise on his cheek from where I hit him, and I hate that I put it there.
He looks up as if he can feel my gaze. I’m too flustered to look away, but my cheeks heat.
I open my mouth to say something, anything to ease this horrible tension, but my words have disappeared, swallowed by my bitter guilt.
I’m too ashamed. It’s like he can see all the broken, horrible parts of me, and I can’t put them away.
I stand up and turn away, going to the window, peering down on the street, watching the frenzy as the Beta’s Path searches for omegas, alphas, and us.
The scent of fear in the city is almost as strong as the scent of blood.
I’d hate to see what they’d do to us if they caught us.
I don’t think we’d make it back to the Fang.
Mordecai approaches, I can feel him, smell him; he’s impossible to miss even if he does move silently.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Kaida. I don’t want you to feel weird with me. I deserved it,” he says, breaking our silence.
“How do you know that’s what I’m feeling?” I ask defensively.
“I can smell your shame in the air, Omega.”
Has my scent increased that much? It burns my nose, but his scent is the same, a touch colder, wrapping around me, making me feel safe.
“I’m sorry for hitting you,” I whisper.
“I deserved it.”
“No, I shouldn’t have done it.”
I turn and force a smile, but he reaches out slowly, giving me time to get away from him. I don’t move; I can’t. He curls his fingers under my chin and presses his thumb gently, tilting my head up.
He opens his mouth to say something. I watch his lips, wondering if he will taste different with all this mess between us. My stomach flutters with nerves, and I lean towards him.
“Maybe we should—” I start to say.
“KAIDA KERES!”
I jump away from Mordecai like I’ve been electrocuted, but he grabs me and drags me back into his body.
“He can’t hurt you; he’s just trying to scare you,” he whispers in my ear. “I’m here. I’m not going to let him touch you.”
His huge body engulfs mine, and then I’m shoved into Jarek’s arms while Mordecai leaps through the window, disappearing.
I make a small sound of protest. Cadel glides across the space, climbing until he’s perched just inside the window, hidden in darkness, waiting and watching.
He hisses, and I shove out of Jarek’s arms and approach the hole. Cadel points down, and I follow his finger until I see who is yelling. The Beta’s Fang is walking beside the Beta’s Claw and beside them, astride his massive black stallion, is the Warden.
Seeing the three of them together is enough to make my bowels turn to water.
“You can’t hide forever; your scent is spreading through the city, getting stronger and stronger. My dogs are going to sniff you out,” the Fang roars, tilting his head back and laughing maniacally.
I expect to see canines, but then I realise what the eight men arranged around them are there for.
“Oh, my gods,” I breathe in horror.
Eight alphas, they look half-starved and mad. I recognise one of them. Willow, the alpha who hit me, the one who escaped the school.
“What are they?” Cadel asks.
“Alphas in ruts. That’s what happens when you deprive an alpha of an omega for that long but introduce a heat scent.
They go into violent ruts where they will rape and bite, maim and even kill the omega before they are stopped.
They are stronger, faster, their sense of smell is better; all they care about is the omega and knotting them by whatever means possible.
Even if it causes her death,” Jarek whispers.
Unstoppable.
He’s got them on leashes.
“What happens to an omega who suppresses her heat?” Cadel asks.
I fidget in on the spot, memories slamming into me.
I don’t want them. “The heats become stronger and impossible to deny, they will allow any alpha to knot them. Some have come out of it bonded to alphas they’ve never met before.
An omega who hasn’t had her heat is all instinct.
They are vulnerable and weak. Prey. The gods truly hated omegas to make us this way. ”
“Have you had a heat?”
I press my lips together, not wanting to open up that gruesome history.
“There’s another option. It’s called heat sickness.
You suppress your heat, and it starts messing with your body, your hormones.
No alpha can get you hot and bothered; you show no attraction, and slowly, you just start shutting down.
I have seen omegas die from heat sickness.
But better that than losing a limb in a heat. ”
Cadel scowls. “They’ve perverted everything that this world should have been.”
“How should it have been?” I ask. “That idealistic view that the gods had for us to walk a path together, to have peace? How can we have peace when it’s so easy to overpower two-thirds of the population? The gods made alphas and omegas weak.”
“Heats were a time of empowerment for an omega, to be sexy, comfortable in their skins, to express their love, and speak without words to the alpha they chose for a heat or a lifetime. By depriving alphas, they’ve created monsters and turned heats into violent experiences that you all fear.
They used to be celebrated. The gods envied humanity for getting to feel so much, for living so vivaciously.
” Cadel is talking, but his eyes are unfocused and far away.
I stare at him, unwilling to break into his musing.
“The betas were there with them, keeping them safe, guarding both and receiving the love of the other designations. It’s how it worked. For so many years, omegas were celebrated, alphas were guardians and protectors, and betas were the solid ground they all clung to. A world in balance.”
“It’s not in balance anymore,” I whisper bitterly.
“No, it’s not,” Cadel says sadly, his eyes on the alphas that have been reduced to animals. “It’s not at all.”
I peer at the side of his face. “How do you know all this?”
He frowns, but he looks taken aback. “I read about it.”
“Oh.”
But that’s weird because almost everything about before and especially anything about alphas and omegas has been destroyed.
“Would a society even be possible now? You don’t remember who you are,” Cadel muses. “That’s the question. Can you recover?”
“We.”
He jerks his head towards me, and I try to ignore my pounding heart.
“What?”
“We. We don’t remember who we are,” I say, putting emphasis on the word because there is something there that makes my body tremble and scares me.
He stands up, and I take a step back, my heart beating even faster because, for a moment, I saw something impossible. For a moment, it looked like he had blue-tinged skin and wore robes of white, not black.
“Kaida,” he murmurs. “I would never hurt you.”
He speaks, and a shadow rises. I take another step back, gaping at him.
“I promise, Kaida, you are safe with me.”
I know it, but there was a huge black shadow of a wolf superimposed over him, and, for one heart-stopping moment, I felt power such as I’ve never felt before, and it rolled off him in waves of icy breezes.
“I know,” I say, but when he comes closer, I turn with him, watching intently for any sign of the other image I saw.
He lifts his hand, and I snatch his wrist, holding it still.
“What is this?” I murmur, running my fingers over the white stars and moon on his palm.
“It was a gift from someone I loved very much,” he says, looking at it.
Jealously rises in me, a thick poison that is hard to swallow. “What happened to her?”
“I don’t know; I’ve been searching for her for a long time.”
I don’t want to let his hand go, but he’s got someone else.
I attempt to let go, but he grabs my wrist, holding me still.
He turns my palm over and traces his index finger in a circle on my palm.
It tingles and turns cold, and a snowflake appears.
It glows and then settles in like it’s an old scar.
Then he lifts his hand to my chest, and I feel the tingle of something icy rise to the surface.
“What is going on?” I whisper, backing up, but he comes with me.
Cadel brings my palm to his mouth and kisses it, then he lets me go, whirls, and leaps through the window, clearing the impossible distance in one jump.
“Are you breathing, or shall I do mouth-to-mouth on you?”
I snap my mouth shut and blink. “He’s…”
“Yeah, we picked up on that, too. Something’s not quite right about him, but he’s on our side, so we’re going to keep him.”
I turn wide eyes on Jarek, who winks at me and hands me the wrapped up bar that Mordecai tried to give me earlier.
“Eat, my darling omega, you need your food to fight the war.”
It’s hard to be anything but charmed around Jarek. I take the food but keep an eye out, uneasy about the missing alphas.
It’s not until they return together hours later that I relax enough to doze.
“She stresses when we’re away from her,” Jarek snarls. “So stop doing it.”
“I’d rather be safe than ambushed,” Cadel murmurs.
Mordecai doesn’t say anything, but he does get up and come and lie behind me. Close but not touching. I roll quickly, burying my face in his chest. His arms close around me, and I breathe in his scent and find myself finally relaxing.
“You heard all that, then?”
“I don’t want you not to come back. People vanish all the time. They disappear.”
“I’m not going to disappear.”
“You don’t know that!” I say, getting agitated.
He is silent for a moment, and then I hear a rumbling noise. It’s quiet but hits every part of me like a hug. It’s warmth and safety. It’s a sound I’ve yearned to hear all my life.
“Purring?” I whimper.
He rolls, pulling me on top of him so I can feel the way his chest vibrates with the sound. I lay my head on his chest, listening in wonder to this sound that is fast becoming one of my favourite sounds in the world.
Cadel moves close to us and hands me a scrap of material. I take it, and my fingers go deep into the soft fur. I moan, stroking it, and then bring it to my face and rub against it.
“What is going on?” Jarek asks.
“An omega’s natural instinct is to nest when she feels unsafe. An alpha’s natural instinct is to provide comfort when his omega is distressed,” Cadel says as if he’s reciting from a book.
“Is this what we’re supposed to be?” Jarek asks and sits down beside us, reaching out and spearing his fingers through my hair, rubbing until I groan.
“Yes, this is what you’re supposed to be,” Cadel whispers. “You take care of your omega like she’s your heart because she is. You can’t exist without her. Nothing is the same. You would spend the end of time trying to find her if she was lost.”
I reach for Cadel, and he sits beside us. They curl up around me, and for the first time in a long time, I can see that being an omega might not be a curse after all. I can almost see how perfect it could be.
“I want to fight. I want this not just for me, but for every other omega who lives in terror. So, I’m going to help the Resistance and try to save these people. But I want to destroy the Beta’s Path. If we get a chance, that’s what I want more than anything.”
“Okay, Kaida. We’ll help you,” Mordecai promises.
Jarek and Cadel murmur agreement.